Foreclosures Hit Minorities Extra Hard

As if there’s not enough bad news about the housing market these days, a new report highlights just how much the foreclosure crisis has ravaged various minorities in this country.

The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit organization, released a report last week that analyzed the number of foreclosures by race and ethnicity. The center found that minority homeowners have received a more than their fair share of foreclosure notices. So far, 17% of Latino homeowners and 11% of African-American homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure or are in serious danger of it.

The data becomes even more severe when you take into account the percentage of each minority that has actually lost their home already. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, “African-American and Hispanic families have received a disproportionate share, even when accounting for income: Nearly 8% of both groups have already lost a home, compared to 4.5% of white borrowers.” And what’s more, collectively each of these minority communities will likely lose nearly $200 billion worth of assets because of this crisis.

As Daily Finance points out, this report “underscores a trend the media has been reporting on for several years: Subprime lenders aggressively marketed their high-interest and high-fee loans to minorities.”

Perhaps the worst part of all is that the report highlights just how much worse the foreclosure crisis may get in the near future. According to the center’s data, 2.5 million foreclosures were completed between 2007 and 2009, which is certainly bad enough, but the center also estimates that foreclosure is “imminent” for another 5.7 million homes and that number could actually be as high as 13 million. Yes, 13 million. That’s above and beyond the terrifying 10 million foreclosures statistic we mentioned earlier this month.